How nice was it to watch an outdoor game in Los Angeles, to not have to care about all those recycled, overdone storylines about "pond hockey" and "childhood memories"? Those teams and their markets may not be perfect and they may not live up to the pretentious ideal us frigid northerners try to hold ourselves to, but they're a part of our game. And they're doing it better than us.

Darryl Sutter, for all intents and purposes, is the best coach in the National Hockey League. His hand is ever-steady. He controls his players through some kind of impenetrable Jedi mind trick. But Sutter doesn't even seem to care. His acceptance of the Kings' coaching job a few months ago seemed like charity work. Yet, here we are again, with the Kings leading a series 3-0 and showing no signs of letting up.

New Jersey seems to be heading down the same road as the L.A. King. Not with a bang, but a whimper. So how do you come back? You fight back. You claw back. You beat them because you know you can, and you know you should.

Too often, high-budget films with casts that read like an IMDB Top 200 forget to be the one thing that movies have to be -- enjoyable. Assembled casts don't always work. The New York Rangers have figured that out, after years of trying to buy every big name free agent in the NHL.